Environmentalism is one of those crazy issues where the “conservative” position is the most progressive. “Liberal” environmentalists go on and on about the need to preserve the status quo, while “conservative” corporatists want to dash headlong into all manner of genetic experimentation and wildlife restructuring without considering the potential effects.

I started this article because I thought it might give me an insight into the mind of a moderate, someone who balances both sides. It’s about Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace, a self-proclaimed rational environmentalist, who currently advocates for the genetic modification of food and against regulation of things like PVC production.

It’s an interesting article, but I didn’t come away thinking of Patrick Moore as a moderate, even though the article was quite sympathetic to him. He is not well-liked by environmentalists (a former Greenpeace director calls him a “corporate whore, an eco-Judas, a lowlife bottom-sucking parasite who has grown rich from sacrificing environmentalist principles for plain old money”). And he is apparently quite well-supported by organizations who probably don’t have the best interests of the planet at heart. So I take Moore’s brand of environmentalism with a heaping teaspoon of salt. But I’m also not very swayed by opponents of GM food.

Yeah, I read this article just tonight in a coffee shop. Having been involved with greenpeace a while back myself and experiencing first hand the irrationality of many environmentalists, I feel like I can agree with Mr. Moore’s general issues of concern. The end of the article states that he is looking for a spark to ignite a new movement in moderate environmentalism. Ignoring the fact that there already is a movement (ie, Natural Capitalism, etc..), there are too many contextual differences between the way he does things now and the way he did them in the 70s — chief of which is that he seems to be a rich, corporate whore.